Intelsat Global files for $1.75 billion IPO

May 18, 2012|Sharanya Hrishikesh | Reuters

(Reuters) - Intelsat Global Holdings S.A., the world's biggest operator of satellite services, filed with U.S. regulators on Friday to raise up to $1.75 billion in an initial public offering of its common stock.

The company filed for its IPO on a day Facebook Inc's eagerly awaited debut fell short of expectations.

Technology stocks have had a good run in an otherwise lackluster IPO market, and companies such as Audience Inc and Millennial Media Inc have benefited from the market's soft spot on their debut.

Payday lender Community Choice Financial Inc and energy company New Source Energy Corp pulled their prospective offerings over the past two weeks as market conditions remained unpromising.

Luxembourg-based Intelsat told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a preliminary prospectus that Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley were underwriting the IPO.

Intelsat posted net loss of $400 million on revenue of $2.6 billion for the year ended December 31, according to the regulatory filing.

The company, which had operated as an intergovernmental organization for more than 30 years, became a private company in 2001.

Intelsat, which transmitted television images of Neil Armstrong's landing on the moon, was in 2008 bought by Serafina Acquisition Ltd, which is backed by private equity firm Silver Lake among other funds.

Intelsat, which assumed debt of about $3.7 billion after the leveraged buyout (LBO), said it may use part of the proceeds from the offering to redeem and repay debt.

The company's revenue has been relatively flat and the offering seems to be a way to pay back debt, said Francis Gaskins, a partner at IPOdesktop.com.

In February, debt-laden casino operator Caesars Entertainment Corp went public, to make up some of the losses made by its private equity owners after its 2008 LBO.

LBOs, in which the acquisition is financed with a large amount of debt, have been criticized for saddling the companies with debt and leaving them with little options to pay them back.

Gaskins said the Intelsat offering was not "particularly exciting".

The filing did not reveal how many shares the company planned to sell or their expected price.

The company, which will change its name to Intelsat S.A before it goes public, intends to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "I".

The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

(Reporting by Sharanya Hrishikesh in Bangalore, additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Maju Samuel)